Listen, Little Man! by Wilhelm Reich

Author:Wilhelm Reich [Reich, Wilhelm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2013-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Throw out your politicians and diplomats

“Would you listen to the reactionary petit-bourgeois individualist! Doesn’t he know that history has its irreversible course and its dustbin, which is where he’ll end up! ‘Know yourself,’ he says. Bourgeois rubbish! The revolutionary proletariat of all countries—led by its beloved leader, the father of all peoples, all Russians, Prussians and Pan-Slavs—will liberate the people! Down with all individualists and anarchists!”

Long live the fathers of all peoples and Slavs! Hurrah … hurrah! Listen to me, little man, I see trouble in store for you.

You’re in the process of taking over; you know it and tremble at the thought. For centuries you’ll murder your friends and hail the führers of all nations, of all proletarians, Russians and Prussians. Year in, year out, you’ll hail one master after another. You won’t hear the whimpering of your infants, the moans of your adolescents, the stifled longings of your wives or husbands, or, if you do, you’ll dispose of all that as bourgeois individualism. On through the centuries you’ll shed blood instead of safeguarding life, confident that with the executioner’s help you’re building your freedom. And day after day, year after year, you’ll find yourself up to your ears in muck. On through the centuries you’ll flock to hear Bigmouth, you’ll cherish his words and succumb to his evil lures, but you’ll be blind and deaf to the call of your own life. Because you’re afraid of life, little man, mortally afraid. You do your best to murder it, in the belief that you’re building “socialism” or the “state” or “nation” or the “glory of God.” You won’t know, you won’t want to know that what you’re really building, day by day and hour by hour, is your own misery; that you don’t understand your children, that you destroy their backbone before they can stand bravely erect; that you steal love; that you are money-mad and power-hungry; that you keep a dog because you’re determined to be somebody’s “master.” On through the centuries you’ll repeat your mistakes until you and your kind die a mass death, victims of the universal social misery; until the horror of your existence strikes a first feeble spark of self-understanding in you. Then, very gradually, cautiously groping your way, you’ll learn to seek out and to find your friend, the man of love, of work, and of knowledge. Then you will learn to understand, respect, and honor him. Then you will come to realize that a library is more essential to your life than a prize fight, that a contemplative stroll in the woods is better than parading, healing better than killing, self-reliance better than reliance on the nation, and soft-spoken modesty better than shouting, patriotic or otherwise.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.